
"pool hall— / I beat the hajibed / woman’s husband”
Crystal Simone Smith’s haiku is infused with a profound love for and appreciation of the natural world. As one of a growing community of Black haiku poets, Smith’s work is also that of an activist, born from her life as a Black woman and mother of two Black sons. Her words resonate as much-needed interventions during a time—like so many other moments in our nation’s history—when it is all too harrowing to be Black and human. Her haiku “election night map,” written in response to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Fifty Shades of White [above], exemplifies the art of distilling the moment. Smith’s work is shaped by her commitment to her craft and her refusal to look away. As she notes, “We have an obligation to respond to the immense ongoing inhumanity we are witnessing, ragingly so.” A poet whose work is at once haunting and human, Smith’s witness, her activism, is necessary reading.
election night map
the bloody south
remains bloody
slave museum—
the entrance fountain
an ebbing shore
tide pool
the silent panic
of silver fish
in the midst
of killings
the flowers return
pool hall—
I beat the hajibed
woman’s husband
downtown rebuild
a preacher sermons
his homeless congregation
another mass shooting
my son practices
his trumpet solo
noontide
housekeepers gossip
under the palms
slave quarters
in one brick
a thumbprint
synagogue shooting
a spring clothesline
of waving colors